Metamorphosis
by Saucery
Summary: Ciel becomes.


**METAMORPHOSIS**

* * *

><p><strong><em>.embryo.<em>**

This is how it begins.

A cupped hand at Ciel's elbow; a hand smoothed across his brow; a momentary embrace after one of Ciel's nightmares, before Ciel recovers his reason and pushes Sebastian away.

And yet, Sebastian persists - in being conspicuously close, in offering him comfort, and it's an _animal_ thing, a deliberate, patronizing, disgustingly Pavloviantactic, to condition him - _acclimatize_ him - with touch, with harmless, non-sexual touch. With bonding, or - or the illusion of bonding. With _intimacy_. There is no living creature that can resist such conditioning. None at all, and Sebastian _knows_ that, and uses it - and Ciel, despite the fact that he knows what it'sdoing to him, lets it happen, anyway. Because it works. Because it _has_ to work. Because Ciel's still human. Because - despite everything - he's alive.

* * *

><p><strong><em>.chrysalis.<em>**

This is how it changes.

Ciel is - not precisely old enough to have developed a sexual impetus of any particular force, but constant physical contact has rendered him vulnerable to it, nonetheless. Thus, when Sebastian's touches _do_ change, Ciel finds that he has been waiting for them, waiting for _this_ - for the mossy heat of another mouth, the sloping grip of another palm - for the slow, inescapable, _drugged_ build of it, until he's shivering, sweating, hot and lit from within like a damned clay _lamp_, his very limbs as sluggish as putty. He's feverish and lumbering and blind, twisting slowly on the sheets like a newborn foal still bloody from the womb, ecstatic with breath and _life_ but still deaf, still _uncomprehending_ of it all - and it's so, _so_ different to what coming has ever been like, for him - with - with those men that had - branded him - or any of the - so _different_ that even thinking of them doesn't sicken him, right now, because he's too fucking_gone_ to even recall in completeness what it had been like, with them, save for the sickening _lurch_ of it, the stomach-turning _give_ as if his foot had suddenly broken through a rotten floor and and taken him with it... It's nothing like that. Nothing like that at _all_ -

"Concentrate," says Sebastian, and Ciel _growls_, because he fucking _is_ - and Sebastian _laughs_, and cradles him close, like a child or a precious treasure or a just-caught bird, and his hands close over Ciel like the gentlest _teeth_, and it's -

"Please," says Ciel, and almost _hates_ himself for it, because it's the first time he's ever said it and meant - _meant_ it - "Don't - " _stop_, he means to say, and Sebastian must understand that, he _must_, because he doesn't. Stop.

He never stops.

Not even when Ciel wants him to.

* * *

><p><strong><em>.imago.<em>**

This is how it ends.

Another dinner at the Trancy manor, another evening of subtle sparring with words and barely-veiled threats - and after they return, Sebastian lets it slip, as if it's _nothing_, that Alois's dependency on Claude is a sign of weakness - his own _and_ his demon's, because Claude had failed to cultivate in him the right amount of _objectivity_, had failed to select a target that would - no pun intended - _harden_ under pressure, not break.

And because Ciel isn't actually a complete fool, he hears what Sebastian's trying to tell him - what he's _been_ trying to tell him, with every kiss and every -

Every -

_No._

"You - you made me believe you were in love with me." He is _not_ shaking.

"Oh, Ciel," says Sebastian, and he almost sounds _disappointed_. "I made you believe _you_ were in love with me." He comes up to Ciel, and touches him lightly on the shoulder - as if he were a crystal that might crack at a single tap. As if he hasn't _already_ cracked, a cold, jagged fissure fracturing the depths of him. "And you know that. You're better than that. You're better than - "

"Alois?" Ciel's eyes are narrow. His _voice_ is narrow -

"_Yes_..." And it sounds like a _hiss_, pleased and serpentine and -

_Fuck_ the fruit of knowledge. Just. _Fuck it_ -

So, what, are Sebastian and Claude in some insane, aeons-long rivalry? '_My _master's tastier than yours.' That's - utterly ridiculous and yet - strangely plausible, if that is apparently what immortal alpha males _do_ when they're tired of size contests. And Alois and Ciel are merely the latest - pawns? Not-so-virgin sacrifices? _Fuck_.

If Ciel didn't know better, he'd think Sebastian and Claude were in love with _each other_. As much as two demons can be. Or maybe in _hate_, but isn't that ostensibly the same thing? For their kind? Attachment of any kind - _greed_ beyond the devouring. And Sebastian isn't - quite - greedy for _Ciel_. Greedy _about_him, yes. Just as Mr. Gaugin is greedy _about_ his newest race-horse - the one he's _sure _will secure him his victory.

Proprietary? Yes. Joyful? Certainly.

_About_ Ciel. Not _for_ him. Or even _of_ him. Not really. That's the distinction. The fine - _horrible_ - distinction.

He doesn't _say_ any of that, of course, but Sebastian can probably see it on his face, because his eyes _flare_ in appreciation. In _precisely_ the way they did when Ciel came for him -

And Ciel can't. Can't. _Cope_ with this.

_But you will_, says that mad, still thing within him, that's been iron-cold since the day his parents burned.

Since then.

And it's a lot like returning to _that moment_, but without the grief - just the _wrench_, and then, jarringly, the _clarity_ -

_Yes._

He still bends over and vomits, though. Into the plush, Persian rug.

And again into the basin, when Sebastian - gently - guides him to it.

As for the hand at his back - it would be a sign of _weakness_ if he - so he doesn't - he doesn't shrug it off.

* * *

><p><strong><em>.fin.<em>**  
>Please review!<p> 


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